Friday, October 16, 2026

Back to today

From X

@StableBread 6 clicks

Fajasy on X

The S&P 500 lost 18% in 2022, and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate, the main U.S. bond index, lost 13%, its worst year since it began in 1976. Over the same year, $XLE, the S&P 500 energy sector ETF, returned 64%, gold was flat, and cash earned ~1.5%. Now what if I told you there's a framework that would've said to own cash and energy in 2022, not stocks and bonds? That framework is called Gave's Four Quadrants, after Charles Gave, co-founder of Gavekal, a macro research firm. It uses two ratios built from market prices, the S&P 500 vs. Oil and Gold vs. Treasuries, to place the economy in one of four environments, and it describes what to own and what to avoid in each. Here's how stocks, bonds, gold, and cash tend to perform in each environment: → Deflationary boom: Stocks, bonds, and cash rise, and gold underperforms. → Inflationary boom: Stocks and gold rise, cash does very little, and bonds fall. → Deflationary bust: Bonds and cash rise, gold stays fairly stable, and stocks fall. → Inflationary bust: Gold and cash rise, while stocks and bonds fall. In my backtest of Gave's rules from 1970 to September 2026, a portfolio split equally between cash, the S&P 500, and either 10-year Treasuries or gold, whichever the framework favored, would have returned 5.7% per year after inflation. Its max drawdown was 28%, vs. 54% for the S&P 500. As of the end of September 2026, the two ratios place the U.S. in an inflationary boom phase. But since January 2025, the S&P 500 to gold ratio has been below its 7-year average, which has often come a few months before the S&P 500 to oil ratio drops below its own 7-year average. If that happens, the U.S. is back in an inflationary bust phase, like 2022. So how do you read the two ratios yourself, and what do they say to own today? That's what I walk through in my new ~20-minute video!

Is The Market Turning The Page?

CoreWeave’s debt and equity price action is framed as a wake-up call for investors amid a broader market discussion.

PesoRama: Research Flash

PesoRama will reach 54 JOi Dollar Plus stores by November after raising C$28.4 million, funding more than 50 additional Mexican store…

Modine Deep Dive

Modine, soon Modexus Solutions, has a $4 billion hyperscaler cooling contract but must ramp factory output and restore margins as data…

AppLovin Deep Dive

AppLovin rebuilt its ad model with AXON 2.0, lifting LTM revenue to about $7 billion and margins to 77% as Unity competition threatens…

TY · long

Tri-continental CORP

Tri-Continental Corp is presented as a long investment-grade fixed-income idea for portfolios with limited liquidity and diversification.

Constellation: Stars Aligning?

Constellation Brands trades near $127 at roughly 11x next-twelve-month EV/EBIT, with recent business results offsetting concerns over…

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 107

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

88 accounts

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.